a hope for change2 - six secondsincredible turnaround of ibm beginning under lou gerstner in the...

JOSHUA FREEDMAN & ALAN DEUTSCHMAN A HOPE FOR CHANGE

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A Hope for Change

Alan Deutschman on Change or Die By Joshua Freedman

When the stakes are high, life and death for the people

or the company, change will happen – right? Fast Company senior writer Alan Deutschman was surprised that the answer is “no.” He was attending

a conference on the future of healthcare where the dean of Johns Hopkins talked about

what happens to cardiac patients when they’re told to “change or die.” The incident led

to an in-depth analysis of individual and organizational change with a startling

conclusion: While change is possible, the usual approach doesn’t work.

Change

Works…

Sometimes.

The difference is

people – and how

they are led.


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How often have you heard an executive

pull out the “change or die” rhetoric,

attempting to rally the forces by

enjoining them to take up a last-ditch

effort to save the company? The

“common sense” notion is that a forceful

presentation of facts will instill fear

causing employees to take the

transformation seriously. Confronted

with this hard-edged urgency, there will

be no room for dissent. The trouble is

that even in real “change or die”

situations, people don’t change. Real

change requires a much more subtle,

relationship-driven approach.

Take the case of a cardiac patient just

after a bypass: “You’re in a change or

die situation,” Deutschman explains,

“You have to switch to a much healthier

lifestyle or you’re going to be killed by

this terrible disease that you have. And

even when doctors tell these patients

you have to change or die, study after

study has shown that two years later,

nine out of ten of the heart patients

have not changed. We like to think that

crisis and fear motivate people to

change. And yet the studies have

shown that even in the change or die

situation most people can't change.

That just really blew me away and made

me want to understand the psychology.”

Deutschman first wrote about “Change

or Die” in a 2005 Fast Company article

that leads, “All leadership comes down

to this: changing people's behavior. Why

is that so damn hard? Science offers

some surprising new answers -- and

ways to do better.” His new book takes

the concept further, explaining how the

traditional corporate view of change just

doesn’t work.

While the notion that people won’t even

change in a “Change or Die” situation

sounds bleak, Deutschman isn’t: “We’re

change machines. We improvise, we

adapt, we overcome. And normally we

do very well with change. It’s just an

issue when people or organizations get

stuck. When we’ve tried the solutions

that we know, the supposed solutions

again and again, they keep failing. At

these times, we can change but we need

to learn from other people.”

“Facts, fear and force

don’t actually

motivate change.”


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The real challenge

isn’t change, but the

“conventional wisdom”

that change requires

the Three Fs: Force,

Facts, and Fear. He

points back to the

heart patients – where

even a doctor’s

expertise, extensive

medical information,

and the fear of death

are not motivating.

“You can't just tell

people that they need

to change. You can’t

try to just scare them. And you can't try

to force them by relying on the moral

authority of your position or expertise.”

One reason the FFF driven change fails

is the inattention to a basic principle of

emotional intelligence: When people

are pushed, they resist. When facts and

fear are used to try and force change,

people may comply in the short term,

but they don’t have a real ownership of

the change. It’s obedience, not

motivation. In the Six Seconds’ Model

of emotional intelligence, this concept is

captured in the competency of Intrinsic

Motivation. Without Intrinsic Motivation,

people will not persevere, even if

something is “good for them.” So an

effective change leader will go beyond

logic to engage people at a heart level.

“We tend to think that people are

rational. Especially in the business world

where leaders usually come from

engineering or scientific or financial

backgrounds. These are very

intellectually accomplished people. And

they’re doing

things that are

technically

sophisticated. So

they tend to have

a very rational

mindset. And

they like to think

that other people

are rational too.

So if you just give

people accurate

information

they’ll make the

right choice. But

in the case of

heart patients, the doctors who come

from this rational background have told

their patients you have a very bad

disease, it’s going to kill you unless you

make these changes in how you choose

to live. And they give people the

accurate information and people still

don’t change.”

What’s the alternative? “You have to

make an emotional connection with

them that inspires a new sense of

hope.”

Deutschman says extensive research

has shown that the most successful

change actually begins with an

emotionally significant relationship

followed by repetition and reframing. In

the 1950s psychologists at Johns

Hopkins University began to study what

forms of psychotherapy worked, and

hundreds of studies have followed up

on this work. “The key factor is the

emotional connection that’s made

between the patients and the therapist.

Its not so much the specifics of the

Deutschman’s new book, Change or Die,

provides a compelling roadmap for

successfully leading change.


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method of therapy. It’s

whether you connect as human

beings. It’s whether you’re

with someone who has this

sincere belief that together

you can learn to change.”

The feeling of hope is

essential, and it comes partly

from the logical side – seeing

results – and largely from

something less tangible.

“We’ve tried what we know

again and again and it’s failed.

So people and organizations

become demoralized, and we

basically give up hope.” This

pessimism is a natural consequence of

the ongoing churn in corporate life –

the annual (or sometimes quarterly)

“transformational strategy” unleashed

by some well-meaning and well-paid

consulting firm. You can just hear the

middle managers’ “here we go again”

refrain as the latest in an incessant

string of changes come rolling over

them, doomed before it starts by a lack

of buy-in.

The antidote isn’t a more logical plan,

Deutschman says, it’s a compelling

relationship. “What we need is someone

who can give us the belief and the

expectation that we can change. It’s

kind of a leap of faith. It comes from

having a personal relationship and

being inspired by their belief in us.

That’s something that gets

communicated in an emotional way.”

This emotional need goes far beyond a

paycheck. Yes, people need to pay the

bills, but they also need something

deeper, and some leaders have

committed to provide that. In the book,

Deutschman uses an example from the

1990s when General Motors closed a

plant because the workers were

“unmanageable.” The old paradigm was

“telling people to do something and

relying on the force of threatening to

fire them if they didn’t.” When Toyota

Hope is the antidote, the missing catalyst, that will

enable a demoralized team to successfully change.

“How do you

overcome that

demoralization?

What you really need

is an emotional

inspiration, a human

connection.”


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took over the plant, they tried a

different set of motivators.

“They took these American

workers to Japan and showed

them how this actually worked

on the assembly lines in Japan.

You can’t just tell people

something. You have to prove

it to them through experience.

They set up a situation

appealing to people’s desire to

be competent, to be creative, to

be successful, and to be

admired and respected for

those skills by the people they

work with.”

In Change or Die, Deutschman

describes the milestones of

successful change outlining a

process parallel to the Six

Seconds’ EQ Change MAP. In

the Six Seconds’ model, change

is successful when it proceeds

through three continuously

cycling phases: Engage,

Practice, and Reflect. The phases each

have specific objectives. There are both

tactical and emotional dimensions to

making the model function:

• Engage: create an initial plan with buy-in and metrics. This

requires a trusting emotional

connection with the change

leader(s) who encourages hope

and builds confidence.

• Activate: implement new approaches to test efficacy. This

requires encouragement and

coaching to learn, practice and

master new patterns and skills

needed to facilitate change and

growth.

• Reflect: identify changes and cement the wins. Here change

leaders must articulate and

celebrate successes – and foster

curiosity and dialogue to assess

the change effort and refocus

the plan for optimal efficacy.

This cyclical approach to change allows

for a much more rapid cycle time

creating short-term wins that

demonstrate the efficacy. Often change

efforts fail because they attempt to skip

over or short change one phase – most

frequently making a plan in isolation

The Six Seconds’ EQ Change MAP guides the process of

effective change. The model shows how to engage the

emotional drivers to sustain a continuous

transformational process.


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and failing to successfully engage

people.

Part of the problem with conventional

change efforts is that they come on the

heels of many other similar efforts – all

tied to facts, force, and fear. People

“know” this new change won’t work.

That perception is about emotion, not

logic, so change leaders need to use

emotional intelligence to connect at a

heart-level. “An organization that’s

struggling and failing has tried various

efforts and strategies that have all failed

in the past. You need to give people

hope. You need to make them believe

that this time with this leader and this

new strategy, that there really is hope

for things to turn around. And that’s

something that can only be done

emotionally.”

“Again and again leaders have told the

people ‘we have a plan, we have a

solution, follow me,’ and it’s failed. So

the people in the organization are

demoralized; they have given up hope.

So how do you overcome that

demoralization?

Engage

What you really need is an emotional

inspiration, a human connection. To

people coming from the hardcore,

quantitative, financial, MBA, Ph.D. kind

of background, this may just seem kind

of squishy. But it’s true.”

“There’s an example in my book of the

incredible turnaround of IBM beginning

under Lou Gerstner in the 1990s.

Gerstner came from that rational,

technocratic mindset. He had been the

youngest partner at McKenzie

Consulting and had an engineering and

MBA background. When he came in to

People “know” the change won’t work.

Change leaders need to move people

beyond that fear and resistance.


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take over IBM, people thought it would

be all spreadsheets and strategic

planning and cost-cutting.

Gerstner somehow realized that what he

needed to do was emotionally inspire

the belief of the people in IBM. Inspire

them that they could be a great

company once again; that they could

thrive and have a brilliant future. He had

to go out there and give speeches and

show by his own conviction, by his own

passion, by his own belief, that it could

change. He had to use his emotions to

inspire the emotions of the people in

the company.”

While the old-style charismatic leader

can give a great locker-room speech and

fire people up, this relationship-based

change leadership requires a more

subtle process. When people are

coming from hopelessness and distrust,

their radar is up, actively looking for

another snow job. Authenticity beats

slick.

“It starts with your own belief and your

own compassion and your own

conviction. People have to see that

you’re sincere. Gerstner was not a great

public speaker. He was not a naturally

charismatic person – not a Steve Jobs

kind of inspirational speaker. In fact,

Gerstner’s a little bit awkward. But

people saw the speech and they got a

sense of his sincerity. They felt

something. And when we look into

someone’s eyes and we hear the tone of

their voice and we hear the rhythm of

their speech, we’ve learned from

experience when people are sincere and

that’s important.”

While sincerity is key, the emotional

component is not sufficient by itself.

Change will be derailed by a lack of buy-

in, but it is equally useless to launch

change without a good plan.

Activate

“In any kind of corporate turnaround,

you need what John Kotter of Harvard

Business School calls short-term wins.

You need to have some success fairly

quickly that allows people to experience

the change. This helps them believe in

it.”

“In my book, I talk about the Dean

Ornish program for heart patients. It’s a

program for people with very bad heart

disease who have been eating very high-

fat diets and being sedentary. Ornish

puts them on a radical vegan diet where

they get fewer than 5% of their calories

from fat and they’re taken out every day

to exercise. It’s a huge lifestyle change.

But after one month, they see that their

chest pains have almost entirely gone

Like roads connecting cities, our brains form

patterns. These patterns become “the way,”

simplifying our lives but making change more

challenging.


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away and that they’ve lost weight and

their cholesterol is falling. These rapid

improvements are also a very strong

motivator for change.”

“So you start by communicating your

belief and your sincerity. But then you

still need to prove to people through

their own experience. They need to see

and feel the benefits of the change if

you’re going to get them to commit to

the hard work of making it happen over

the longer term.”

The challenges of change are rooted in

neurobiology – the human brain literally

wires itself to respond a particular way.

The patterns of thought, feeling, and

action quickly form, based on

experience, and slowly change – it’s our

brain’s way of making life easy. To

overcome the brain’s wiring, sometimes

a company needs a fairly radical culture

change.

Since the neurological patterns form

based on experience, corporate culture

tends to be self-reinforcing – people

come to see a particular way of doing

business as normal, and normal feels

right. But business-normal is often

dysfunctional.

Deutschman illustrates the opportunity

to break out of “dysfunctional normal”

with the story of the W.L. Gore company

– the makers of the waterproof fabric

GORE-TEX widely used in outdoor gear,

founded in 1958 by Bill and Vieve Gore.

“Bill was an engineer, a chemist, at

Dupont back in the 1950s – a classic,

old school, military command and

control, hierarchal industrial company.

And he was frustrated by it. He realized

that there were only two places where

people really talked to each other and

worked together in creative ways.

“One was on a taskforce. When the

company really had a problem, they put

together a taskforce and they threw out

the rules. People didn’t have to only

report to their boss; they just put a

group of people together and they

actually found creative solutions and got

things done and worked with each

other.

“The other time was in the carpool on

For change to occur, people need to hold

a new kind of conversation. Given that

any honest dialogue is rare, it takes an

exceptional workplace context for people

to openly talk through change.


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the way to work where people in the car

actually talked to each other without

regard to the hierarchy and the chain of

command. Then when they got to the

office at 9:00, it would fall into the

military paradigm.”

So Gore decided to start a company that

would follow the rules of the taskforce

and the carpool – a company where

people would focus on working together

to solve problems. Now almost 50

years old with over $1.8b in sales, 45

plants, and nine years near the top of

Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work, the

experiment seems to be a success.

In terms of change, what’s interesting

about the Gore case is what happens

when a new Associate (not “employee”)

comes into the company. “Someone

from the outside who’s worked in

traditional hierarchal companies comes

in and they’re told, ‘We have no bosses

here.’ At first the new people think that

that’s just corporate talk and

euphemism. The Gore people say,

‘Really – you don’t have a boss. Your

job is to go and meet all the people in

the group and get to know them and let

them get to know you. And then once

you know each other and have a feeling

for each other then they’ll start to ask

you to take part in things.’”

“The newcomers typically respond:

‘Let’s get over all the PR and the

corporate euphemism. Really, who’s my

boss? Who’s gonna tell me what to do?

What’s my job?’ It takes a while for them

to realize you have to create your job.

You have to connect with other people

there and get them to invite you to join

their teams and their efforts. But it

doesn’t make any sense to people

because it’s totally outside their

experience, it’s outside their belief

system or conceptual framework.”

This experience illustrates the power of

patterns. The conceptual framework

starts at a neurological level with brain

cells connecting to form interlocking

systems. Those new Gore employees

have the system of “boss” and

“hierarchy” strongly connected with the

notion of “work.” The patterns become

a kind of frame though which they see

At first people just reject facts that don’t

fit their preconceptions. Then, with time

and experience in a new context, the

preconceptions get washed away.


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the world, and their brains literally

restructure so that frame makes sense.

“We all have these belief systems or

conceptual frameworks or patterns.

We’ve had them for a long time, and

they influence our gut feelings about

things. They shape how we view the

world. And when you present people

with facts that don’t fit into their

conceptual frameworks, they tend to

just reject the facts.”

Reflect

The capacity to recognize these patterns

is one of the core competencies of

emotional intelligence, and it’s one of

the eight competencies measured by the

Six Seconds’ Emotional Intelligence

Assessment (SEI). Understanding this

link between thoughts, feelings, and

actions, seeing these unconscious filters

and response mechanisms, is a key first

step to responding intentionally rather

than reacting on autopilot.

The W.L. Gore case also illustrates what

neuroscientists call “plasticity” – they

brain is changeable, and first-hand

experience over a period of time is a

powerful way to rewire the synapses.

This reality has important implications

for education as well – including MBA

education. “I’ve been writing about MBA

business education over the past 20 or

25 years, and every few years the top

schools will call on journalists to say

‘we’re changing the program. It’s not

just about analysis, it’s not just

quantitative – we’re doing the soft skills,

we’re doing leadership, we’re doing

communications and that’s what’s

important now.’ But I’m still not sure

that people fully grasp the importance

of the human elements. And maybe the

The first step to changing

patterns is recognizing

them. This requires self-

reflection – or “zooming

back” to see a larger

picture.


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best place to teach that isn’t in a

university classroom.”

“You could teach people in the

classroom about the W.L. Gore culture,

but until they’ve actually worked in it

and lived in it for a year, are they really

going to understand it at a gut level? It’s

hard because being told something

doesn’t change our belief systems, our

conceptual frameworks. It’s actually

experiencing it repeatedly that drives

the shift in our beliefs.”

In other words, the explicit content of a

class becomes less important than the

tacit experience of the learning process.

What’s internalized isn’t so much what’s

said, isn’t so much the powerpoint, but

is more what happens at a gut level.

“It’s not enough to just take the two-

week long trip to Asia to meet people or

to have the six-week project in Europe

or in Silicon Valley. In order to change

people’s deeply rooted belief systems,

you’re talking at least a year or two

immersed in a different culture on a

daily basis. With that amount of time it’s

amazing what people can learn. In my

book I talk about the Delancey Street

program in San Francisco, which takes

criminals, drug-addicted felons, coming

out of the state prisons, and in three to

four years transforms them into sober,

peaceful, enterprising workers. It works

by immersing them in a culture, but

that’s not something you can do in a

one-semester course that meets three

times a week."

Deutschman’s research also applies at a

very personal level. He’s faced the

challenge of being stuck and then

finding a way to change. “I struggled

for a decade, from my 20s to 30s, with

being very overweight. I’m not quite

5’9” and at my peak I weighed 228

pounds, so I was technically an obese

person. I really had this bad health

problem and I knew that I had to do

something about it. I struggled and

failed for a decade.

“I had been successful at all the other

things I had done in my life. I’d done

well in school and had a thriving career

in a very competitive field. I felt like an

accomplished, successful person, yet I

had this one area where it was clear that

I needed to change. I just continually

struggled and failed to change; I came

“In order to change

people’s deeply

rooted belief

systems, you’re

talking at least a year

or two immersed in a

different culture on a

daily basis. With that

amount of time it’s

amazing what people

can learn.”


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close to believing that’s just the way

that I was.

“When I lived in New York I was writing a

column for GQ magazine and they paid

for me to work with one of the most

expensive, prestigious personal trainers

in New York at the Equinox chain of

gyms, which was the very hot chain of

gyms at the time. I was supposed to

work out everyday with the top trainer

and I wound up gaining weight from the

experience.

“When I moved to San Francisco I

accidentally found a trainer who I

formed a strong relationship with. She

communicated a strong conviction that I

could change and I would change. This

emotional link to her gave me hope and

she was able to help me learn a whole

different way of approaching my

lifestyle. So it was a matter of really

finding the right person who could help

me learn. I wound up losing 40 pounds

from the experience and keeping it off.”

Deutschman’s personal experience

frames change in a new way: Rather

than seeking a solution, change is about

learning. Who do you trust to teach

you? What is it about these trustworthy

teachers that you can emulate? Perhaps

the whole notion of “leading change”

should be reformatted to “teaching

change.” If you are a leader and you

want people to change, are you an

effective teacher? Are you building a

relationship where learning can occur?

Change is about

learning and trust.

Who do you trust

to teach you?


Page 13

Given the challenges of change, and

how easily it seems individuals and

organizations get stuck, Deutschman

offers this hope: “I though that if I can

do this then there’s hope for everyone

to change. So in the book I talk about

the hardest cases. Heroin-addicted

criminals. People whose arteries are

almost completely clogged from heart

disease. The auto plants that GM

considered the worst plants with the

most unmanageable workers. Even in

these toughest cases where some might

dismiss the possibility, profound change

is possible.”

We’re made to change, Deutschman

says, because humans are great at

learning. It starts with a relationship:

“We can change but we need to learn

from other people. We need first to

start with their belief and conviction in

us. We start with an emotional bond

knowing they believe in us. Then we

need to learn from them.” In addition to

the right relationship, learning takes a

kind of humility and the emotional

safety to fail and start again. “We have

to keep becoming beginners and going

through the process of learning again.

Yes it’s frustrating, but it’s worth it.”

In an 18-year career as a writer, Alan Deutschman has been the Silicon Valley

correspondent for Fortune and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, GQ, and New

York Magazine. He is currently a senior writer for Fast Company. His web site is

http://www.alandeutschman.com/ His new book is Change or Die: The Three

Keys to Change at Work and in Life (Regan Books, 2007).

Joshua Freedman is the author of INSIDE CHANGE: Transforming Your

Organization With Emotional Intelligence (www.insidechange.net). He is Chief

Operating Officer of Six Seconds, The Emotional Intelligence Network

(www.6seconds.org), world leaders in developing emotional intelligence to

improve performance. His website is www.jmfreedman.com

a hope for change2 - six secondsincredible turnaround of ibm beginning under lou gerstner in the...

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